


The Fairy-Touched Queen: Discovering the Life of Queen Cinders Through An Examination of Her Mythical Counterpart, by Carla Edmundston

by straightforwardly



Category: Cinders (Visual Novel)
Genre: Academia, Gen, Pseudo-Historical Research, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2843747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An article excerpted from <i>Cutting Through the Veil: An In-Depth Look at the Historical Reality Hidden Within Common Myths and Legends.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fairy-Touched Queen: Discovering the Life of Queen Cinders Through An Examination of Her Mythical Counterpart, by Carla Edmundston

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eida/gifts).



> Eida, I... am reasonably certain that when you asked for a fic which dealt with the future repercussions of Cinders' dealings with the Fairy, you were not expecting 2K of fake!historical research. If this is not your thing, then I promise that I won't be offended if you decide to not read this. Still, I hope that you do enjoy it.
> 
> Many thanks to [beatrice_otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beatrice_otter) for the beta! You gave me many wonderful suggestions as to how I could improve this; I only wish that I'd had the time to incorporate all of them.
> 
> All of the names in this fic are references (some more oblique than others) to the canon characters.

The Fairy-Touched Queen:  
Discovering the Life of Queen Cinders Through An Examination of Her Mythical Counterpart  
by Carla Edmundston

Perhaps no figure in history has been as infamously shrouded in mystery as has Queen Cinders. Few concrete details about her life are known; even the knowledge of her existence as an actual person rather than simply a legend is limited to a handful of signatures on royal decrees. Yet the impact she had was monumental. Countless songs, poems, and legends have sprung up around her, with many new variations being created to this day. With the recent popularity of Vasilla Carmillian’s novel _Daughter of Soot_ , a modern-day retelling of the Cinders legend, interest in the life of the actual Queen Cinders has reached an all-time high. Yet when one examines the historical records, it is to discover that very little is actually known about her.

Some scholars have attempted to use the minimal amount of existing historical evidence to argue that Queen Cinders never truly existed at all, and was rather merely a figure of legend. [1] This argument relies primarily on a few key pieces of evidence. Not only did King Basile II die without heirs, but he was also buried alone in his tomb. No similar tomb has ever been uncovered for Queen Cinders; her remains have been lost to time. These scholars argue that Basile II never married at all, and in fact had secret homosexual tendencies. This would explain his lack of heirs and why, contrary to the traditions of the time, he was buried separate from his spouse. According to this school of thought, Queen Cinders was merely a figure taken from some pre-existing myths who was then used to obscure the truth about Basile II’s proclivities. [2]

However, to argue against the reality of Queen Cinders’ existence is to willfully ignore and distort the existing evidence. Of the scant thirty-four surviving edicts from Basile II’s reign, nineteen are co-signed by Queen Cinders. While some have attempted to argue that these signatures were forgeries added after the fact in order to lend credence to the lie of Queen Cinders’ existence, there is no evidence for this actually being the case. More importantly, this explanation does not account for the existence of the Edict of the Wood. This edict, which was issued 245 B.R. and had the rather common purpose of reserving a section of woodland for the crown’s personal use, is most notable for the fact that it was issued solely by Queen Cinders. [3] As it is unlikely that a fictitious figure would be able to issue a law, one must then conclude that Queen Cinders was indeed an actual person. 

However, the fact that such theories can come about says much about the state of existing scholarship on Queen Cinders. Previous scholars of the queen have been disappointed in the amount of existing sources which deal directly with Queen Cinders, and not her mythological counterpart. There exists shockingly few sources which relate to Cinders the Queen rather than Cinders the legend. Despite these obstacles, however, historians in the past have managed to put together some key details about Queen Cinders’ life. 

Essentially nothing is known about Queen Cinders’ early life prior to her marriage to Basile II. Some scattered family birth records have indicated that a child by the name of Cinders was born to a nearby noble family around the same time Queen Cinders would have been born, and scholars in the past have attempted to argue that this was the same Cinders who eventually became queen. However, the child Cinders disappeared from the historical record shortly after her father was recorded as having died during an influenza outbreak. Thus, it is much more likely that, rather than growing up to become queen, the child Cinders died in the same outbreak as her father.

It can be surmised that she likely shared her husband’s political ideals. Although she co-signed many of Basile II’s edicts, that was not the case for all of them. This suggests that her signature was not merely a formality, but rather an active political choice. Interestingly, her signature is attached to many of Basile II’s most liberal reforms, including, most importantly, the Edict for the Creation of the Assembly, which is notable for creating the first representative legislative body in the history of the country. Thus, it can be inferred that she believed in similar democratic ideals as did Basile II. 

Not much more can be inferred from the few sources about the actual Queen Cinders which are available to us. However, by analyzing the many legends, ballads, and poems relating to the mythical Queen Cinders, it is possible to uncover more about her life. While these sources have often been dismissed as being purely works of fancy with no true historical value, in fact many of these tales have been formed around some kernel of truth. While it is clear that the magic and other mystical activities which appear in these sources could not have actually occurred, that does not mean that these events could not have served as metaphors for the actual events of Queen Cinders’ life.

Much of what was written about the mythical Queen Cinders revolved around her relationship with the realm of Faerie. In general, people who lived prior to the Reclamation had a strong belief in the magical and the fantastic, something which was particularly true in regards to the existence of faeries. Although Olivia Swanson argues in her work “Mundane or Magic?: The Trajectory of Belief 400 B.R. – 100 A.R.” that by Basile II’s reign there was a waning belief in magic, the sheer volume of works which suggested an apparent widespread belief in Queen Cinders having a connection with Faerie demonstrates that this was not the case. No less than fifty-six poems and ballads about Queen Cinders remain from the period leading up the Reclamation, the earliest of which may have actually been published during Queen Cinders’ reign. While some of these may have otherwise been dismissed as having been intended to be fictional entertainment, three of those works were poems written as glorian odes, which prior to the Reclamation had been solely reserved for informative poetry. This suggests that people at the time genuinely believed that Queen Cinders interacted with a mystical realm of Faerie in some shape or form. 

Many, if not all, of these sources referred to Queen Cinders as having been “faerie-born.” [4] Depending on the source, Queen Cinders was often said to have been either born human and raised in Faerie, or was seen as having been a Fairy herself who only came to the mortal world to become Basile II’s queen. For instance, _The Legend of the Fire Queen_ described how the Fire Queen snuck out of Faerie dressed in a gown “woven from the light of the moon and stitched with thread pulled from the stars” in order to meet the Prince, who was presumably based on Basile II, when he was lost in the woods at midnight. [5] These various references to Queen Cinders coming out of some mystical realm prior to her marriage to Basile II suggests that her origins were not something lost by time, but rather was already a mystery during her own lifetime. 

Much of what had been written about Queen Cinders also referenced her having some mystical source of knowledge. In _The Legend of the Fire Queen_ , she was described as using the lake where she and her Prince had met as a “seeing-glass” through which she could see the future, while the ballad _The Fairy-Touched Queen_ described how she took a ten-year-long journey into Faerie in order to gain “the knowledge of all men / the knowledge which all men seek”. Still other sources referred to fairy bargains, enchanted mirrors, and other mystical sources of information. The constant emphasis on Queen Cinders’ unnaturally extensive knowledge suggests that she was likely not only an intelligent ruler, but also well-educated for her time. The references to her gaining this knowledge through travel to Faerie may also hint at her having been well-traveled, or perhaps even foreign-born. Her being a foreigner would explain both the lack of information about her early life, as well as why she seemed so alien as to be considered some sort of mystical creature by her people. 

Possible explanations for other mysteries of Queen Cinders’ life can also be found in these sources. Perhaps the most significant of these is what they reveal about Queen Cinders’ death. As hinted at earlier, both the time and cause of her death is unknown. No records about her death exist, nor has any tomb for her ever been found. This mystery has baffled historians for centuries, as Queen Cinders seemed to have, for all intents and purposes, simply disappeared from history. 

Most sources which dealt with the end of the mythical Queen Cinders’ life referred to her as being “faerie-lost” or otherwise being mourned when she was returned to “Beauteous, perilous, wondrous Fairy / Fairy from which she was forged”. One lesser-known ballad told of how Queen Cinders was lost by pursuing a young girl, who was supposedly the daughter of Basile II and herself, whom had been stolen by Faerie as payment for some unspecified aid. Although it is unlikely that Basile II and Queen Cinders ever had a child, the theme of Queen Cinders becoming somehow “lost” due to her relationship with Faerie ran throughout these sources. 

It is possible that the actual Queen Cinders may have simply abandoned her country. If we continue the earlier assumption that her being “faerie-born” simply meant that she was a foreigner, then for her to return to Faerie may simply mean that, for unknown reasons, Queen Cinders chose to return to the land of her birth. While this explanation does not answer the question of how and when she died, it would explain the lack of a tomb.

However, it is much more likely that Queen Cinders died of an illness. Prior to the Reclamation, people tended to believe that disease came about from what they referred to as a “fairy’s curse”. This can be seen in the poem “The Mother’s Lament”, which was written about a hundred years prior to Queen Cinders’ reign, when the speaker, a mother who had lost all of her children to disease, wrote “O, what an unlucky creature can I be / O, how I rue that day / I ever did that fairy see!” [6] Thus, referring to Queen Cinders as being “faerie-lost” may have simply been another way of saying she had died of an illness. 

In the end, most information about Queen Cinders remains little more than conjuncture. While examining the legends which surround her may give us more clues about her life, it cannot provide solid answers. Unless new evidence can be uncovered, it is unlikely that we could ever truly know who Queen Cinders was and what became of her.

* * *

[1] Perhaps the most thorough explanation of this theory can be found in Hoya Carnon’s article “The Fabrication of a Bride: The True Life and Times of King Basile II”.

[2] This theory, of course, willfully ignores the existence of countless documents (including family records, church records, and noble marriage contracts), the earliest of which dates to 330 B.R., which clearly indicate the existence of same-sex marriages. While such marriages may have not been common, they clearly were accepted, even among the highest of nobility. Thus, had Basile II actually had such tendencies, the idea of creating a fictional spouse to disguise those tendencies would have been considered ludicrous.

[3] The fact that this was issued by Queen Cinders alone also suggests that she had legislative power separate from that of her husband, Basile II, which in turn suggests that she had no small amount of power in the kingdom. 

[4] This particular epitaph seems to have originated from _The Fairy-Touched Queen_ , which is perhaps the most famous ballad written about Queen Cinders.

[5] This legend was first transcribed by the Zosian sisters sometime between 88-92 A.R. Although the exact origin of this legend is unknown, it has generally been agreed that it was based upon Queen Cinders. 

[6] Swanson does argue in her book that in the years leading up to Basile II’s reign, people had begun to gain a basic understanding of illness. However, she disregards the existence of songs and poems, such as the one referenced above, which suggest otherwise. For a more accurate depiction of how people prior to the Reclamation understood disease, see Tobain Karlmann’s work _Fairy Curses and the Scourges of Witches: A Look At Illness and Disease in the Pre-Reclamation Era_.


End file.
